sponsorship

Imagination Let Loose in the Kingdom placeholder blurb.

Graffiti Kingdom is the sequel to the charmingly quirky and imaginative Magic Pengel, which found something of a cult following among RPG fans. The chief innovation of Magic Pengel was the ability to draw your own monsters. This feature is updated in Graffiti Kingdom, allowing the players to design ever more complex creatures. Recently I corresponded with Inoue Osamu, the Chief Director of Graffiti Kingdom, to talk about their nifty technology.

Getting to draw and play your own monsters is pretty incredible. Where did you get the idea to make a game like this?

We thought it would be fun for players to play a game with a character that they drew. The idea of giving people the tools to let their imagination take control was something we felt would be an enjoyable gaming experience.

I was inspired by the theory of "Teddy" - that any shape drawn on a plane can be converted to 3-D. I started to put the idea into Graffiti Kingdom's predecessor, Magic Pengel. While working with that technology, I wondered if I could use the character's center line as a bone to turn the 2-D shapes into 3-D shapes with skeletons. Then use the bones to animate them. After many revisions, I figured out how to do it and it was fun.

How does the technology work?

Getting the technology to work properly was a massive undertaking but one that paid off. We tried to figure out how to make every shape, using the least amount of polygons. After a lot of hard work, we figured out how to convert 2-D images to rounded shapes, as well as rectangular shapes. In the game, when the user creates a 2-D shape, they can choose what kind of 3-D shape they want for each part: rounded, rectangular, asymmetrical...

In order for players to move pictures realistically, it is necessary to program each part individually. Before we design the bone structure for each part, we need to know what type of part it is. If it is a hand, foot, or tail, it will animate differently. This also gives the player more control in designing the characters that they want to play with. Not just in terms of looks, but in gameplay as well.

Once a "Knee... is detected, then the game figures out if it is a front leg or a back leg. Then the game counts how many legs that particular character has. Bipeds move quite differently than quadrupeds or tripeds. Once this has been determined, the game will figure out what styles of animation are available to the player.

We move the legs by using IK (Inverse Kinematics) because the animations are determined by the length of the leg and the position of the feet and knees.

The first game (Magic Pengel in North America) also allowed players to draw their own Doodles. How is the technology in Graffiti Kingdom different?

We listened to the fans and tried to give them more features to play with. We've added color blending, transparencies, and lots more functions.

Players also wanted to be able to control the action instead of just giving commands like in Magic Pengel. We focused on creating a great adventure game.

We also spent a lot of time adding personality to the characters' animations. As you'll notice, a tall skinny character animates and plays differently, than a short, stocky one.

We've also streamlined the game, so the player can jump right into the action right after they create a character. They can also swap between 3 characters at a time, in addition to playing the hero Prince Pixel, so they can strategically plan how they want to play through the levels.

Have you seen some of the fan art created with this technology? What do you think about that?

We were impressed with the quality of creatures that the players were able to create and weíve laughed quite a bit at the funny ones.

When the Japanese Fan Site launched, one user sent in his Memory Card with his creatures on it. After that, lots of other fans sent in their creatures. There were some really impressive ones. One creature changed its shape, then looked like it combined with another creature, and actually changed its facial expressions. Even our programmers couldn't figure out how he did it.

The players made all kinds of characters from games and movies. It was great!

Are there any future plans for developing this technology, especially in regard to Next-Gen systems?

We spent a lot of time creating the technology which is quite sophisticated and an impressive feature within itself. I feel that the Next-Gen systems will allow us to get even more creative. It would be fun if players could create their own doodle towns. However, we can't officially announce any future plans - yet.

Games.net's Countdown to...